Close your eyes, and a 3,000-acre wildfire on the banks of the New Fork River in Wyoming's Bridger Wilderness crackles deceptively, like a soothing campfire. But any sense of security is shattered quickly by the blaze's more violent noises.

In a laboratory at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, a moving plate jostles eight test tubes inside a mirrored glass box. Bacteria in the test tubes are being used to grow the mountain pine beetle genes responsible for producing the insect's chemical defenses against lower temperatures.